


Fiberglass

by orphan_account



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Car Accidents, Character Death, M/M, roadtrip gone wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-06 23:52:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm sorry" will never be enough to wash the red from sandstone spires.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fiberglass

A horrorsong of screeching brakes and click-clattering insulated glass popping from its fitted frame; the ground twisting by a shattered window in a sickening three hundred sixty degree roll turns to mocking blue and suddenly the world is heat and dark and crack-popping roar.

 He wakes in confusion and flame, coming alive with a spasm and sputtering, painful inhalation of loosely packed earth. His fingers dig deep and he rolls, coughing and retching, eyes screwing shut in the wake of merciless light. He rolls again, away from pain and heat and blistering skin, and somehow he finds his hands against rigid earth and delicately, delicately, he bunches his knees beneath him. One hand leaves the ground- sweet, solid footing- and he lurches, but does not fall. Trembling fingers brush the ache in the midst of off-blonde thatch and he recoils as they come away scarlet-hot.

Absent eyes turn to the sky as his mind struggles to process through the haze of thudding pain and thick smoke-  _sand, glass, blood, metal, path_

_roadtrip_

_Roadtrip!_

His fingers clench and rake the sand as he struggles to his knees first, his feet- lurching and stumbling and waving his cramped and dripping arms for balance- and he calls.

“Mattie!”

His throat is scorched and bile-burned, and he retches again before screaming as best his parched throat allows, lurching away from the flames that surround- imagined or not.

“Maaaaaaa-ttieeeeee!”

He stumbles, clawing his way through exhaustion and the ache that comes fully now to limbs and mind, feet dragging through the parched earth as he wails.  
  


“Williaaaams! It’s not- i-it’s not funny anymore! Matthew!”

A shape, near, wavering in the heat, and he scrambles for it. The back of a great beast, looming shadowy through rapidly waning light. He squints and the world comes back into focus for a moment- damn concussion- and he swallows before making his way to the twisted heap that lays flame-blackened upon the parched earth.

The van- that old ramshackle vehicle that Matthew’s brother had let them borrow, the six-seater with a bed hidden back and over thirty thousand miles weighing down the odometer. The vehicle that they had nicknamed the Lunar Rover that only came in one shade of Ass-Ugly Aqua.

Their van, blackened and twisted and belching a horrible, acrid smoke, laying splayed across the desert sands.

“Mattie? Mattie!”

A disconsolate whimper struggles through the encroaching twilight, and Gilbert gives a squeal as his eyes rove frantically across inches of charred metal. A shape wriggles feebly against what the van’s bulk, and he falls to the ground, so great is his relief. He crawls, kicking up plumes of ash and sand, his mouth stretching in a frantic grin. “Oh, god, Birdie, what are you, deaf? Didn’t you hear me calling yo-“

He stops short, jaw sagging, eyes widening and head already moving in frantic denial of the situation. Matthew’s hands scratch feebly at the sand, eyes bright with pain and dulling rapidly. Matthew’s lower half, beginning at his waist, disappears beneath the van’s bulk. He whimpers again.

“No. Oh, god, no, Matt, it’ll all be okay, we’ll get you out of here, you’ll be fine!” Gilbert lurches to clasp his trembling hand, murmuring soothingly, at least to his own ear. In reality, he does nothing but mumble in a panicked undertone, and Matthew is neither glad nor pained by it; all he can focus on is the compression of his innards and the slow pooling of blood in his bowels. Here, the sand is sticky and red, and here the scarlet leaks in a spreading puddle from mangled legs and jut-boned hips that snapped like twigs in a gale. “You’ll be fine! Somebody has to come along eventually, right? We’ll have you pulled out of there in no time, you’ll see…we’ll get p-patched up and keep on..”

He fumbles for his cell phone, finds his pocket empty.

In the cigarette lighter, melted down to scrap and plastic in the heat. Or crushed by the impact of two-point-five tons of steel and rubber and chipping paint. He spits and runs his fingers through shaggy, deep-blonde locks, matted with sweat and blood. “We’ll be fine,” he repeats, soft and thick.

Matthew whimpers and squeezes his hand feebly; it’s a wonder, an impossibility, that he’s alive, really, awake, but he has little choice; the pain is more intense than the heat, and he struggles, claws, but ultimately his will flags. His chin juts toward a patch of boulder-studded earth ten feet away, and Gilbert, at once, hisses denial. “Never. God, Matt…you’re…y-you’re gonna be just fine…now shut up, okay?”

He ‘mmphs’, insistent, pained, and his eyes have gone glassy and it’s a struggle not to fade.

_[please]_

“No!”

Whimper-

_[it hurts]_

And eventually Gilbert’s hands trail Matthew’s body- seeming so fragile now, those lumberjack arms- to where it disappears beneath four thousand pounds of bulk and he pushes himself to stand.

He could never refuse the man for long.

Matthew’s eyes haunt him as he roots among the rocks, eventually coming out with a deep red stone so perfectly sized, so perfectly jagged. A laugh bubbles in his throat, thick and near mad, and he suppresses it. His heart echoes in his ears as Matthew’s lips tilt up in a grateful smile, his eyes closing. Gilbert falls to his knees beside the blonde, arms trembling, and it feels as though he’s forgotten something as he rears back to strike-

And the flash of violet behind his eyes is so painfully, distractingly wonderful, years of smiles tossed behind siblings’ backs and late nights spent cliff-gazing and careful love-making in the back of his brother’s Volkswagen and suddenly his face is drenched with hot salt and Matthew’s head is eggshell-broken before him.

The sun sets behind his eyes as he realizes what he couldn’t remember.

“I love you.”

 

 


End file.
